Does Google deserve to be criticised?

When Google first entered China’s market, it was not well accepted by the Chinese Government. It was not sure about the rules that it has to comply with in order to strike a successful deal with the government. Now it has learnt its lesson. Together with other big Internet search engines like Yahoo, it has decided to censor its own web contents to fit itself into China. However, its act has drawn overwhelming criticisms from critics of the Western nations. Does it deserve those criticisms? I do not think so.

Google is now a publicly owned company, its ultimate aim is to gain profits besides its ambition to boost information accessibility across the globe. We thus can not blame it for its launching of this commercial strategy to maintain its own sustainability as well as enhance its profitability to survive. After all, it does not inflict any harm on anybody by doing this. Since it is a profit-driven corporation, we should expect it to be flexible according to different needs of different situations, in this case, to comply with the set of rules formulated by the Chinese government. One golden rule to have successful businesses done on a foreign land is that one should be ready to follow the regulations established by the local government as a form of respect for that nation's political system. No nation would welcome a defiant group. Critics from the Western nations tend to adopt a wrong perception of Google, taking it to be a Speech Freedom advocate. They expect Google to be like all Newspapers in Europe and US, disseminating whatever it knows to the public, to the world. However, it is globally known fact that China suppresses freedom of speech heavily. It is thus not realistic to expect Google to perform well in China with its usual tactics of supplying readers with whatever it has. Moreover, critics are simply over worried about Google’s decision. According to the Time article titled, “Google Under the Gun”, China has 4 million bloggers and the number are rising at a rate 18% per year. This figure has far outnumbered the population of the Internet cops. It is impossible for them to exert total control over online content and restrict what people can obtain from online. There are softwares available to overcome the constraints and public can always use spelling and capitalization to outfox the online filter, which is robotically designed. So, why are they worrying so much?


What is more, other foreign search engines are also doing the same thing in China. According to the same article, Yahoo! handed over the computer IP address of a blogger, who used Yahoo! for his e-mail to transmit sensitive state documents, causing him to be jailed for 10 years. Also, when the Chinese government took offense at the entries of a blog hosted by Microsoft’s MSN service, it immediately clamped it shut. Google will be of no exception. Sooner or later, it would encounter things of this nature. As a result, it has to get ready to avoid conflict with the state government should it want its business to prosper.

Another reason why I believe that it does not deserve the criticisms is that it plays a great role in making Chinese people more informed about things happening outside China. China only prohibits discussion of sensitive issues like the Tiananmen Square Event, Cultural Revolution and Reunification with Taiwan for the sake of safeguarding its social and political stability. It is done out of protecting its national interest. We have to respect a nation’s stand. Besides, news regarding global issues and scientific research results are free to be disseminated among people. With its powerful engine, it can boost the information flow in China a great deal. It would be unfair to judge Google simply based on this action of its. It carries some more precious values, which we cannot ignore.

In the end, we should not dwell on its decision to censor its content; instead, we should take a closer look at its real contributions to the information flow in China. To survive and maintain its sustainability, it has to comply with China’s regulations. After all, it is the Chinese people, who are going to decide whether Google has benefited their lives or has brought disasters upon their lives.